Party presidentialization in post-Suharto Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Indonesia presents an extremely rare quasi-experimental research case: the constitutional reforms and the transition to full presidentialism have effected a presidentialization of political parties that is largely in line with the changes predicted by the model of Samuels and Shugart [2010. Presidents, parties and prime ministers: How separation of powers affects party organization and behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]. Especially the rise of the new president and his difficult relationship with his own party are testimony to this. But a closer look reveals that the model has to be adapted to Indonesian politics. Presidents have tools to forge grand coalitions and to overcome the dualism to an extent. The size and history of political parties as well as wider socio-economic changes, that is an increasing oligarchization of party organization, have to be considered. Moreover, highly personalized vehicle parties serving the interests of a presidential candidate have emerged. It follows that institutional and structural incentives combined have produced a party system consisting of different party types.

KEYWORDS:

• Presidentialism
• presidentialization
• personalization
• party system
• vehicle parties
• Indonesia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Andreas Ufen is a political scientist and a Senior Research Fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, Germany. He works on democratization, political Islam, populism and political parties in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia and Indonesia.

ORCID

Andreas Ufen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3385-0645

Notes

1. The Constitution of 1945 is still a revered, almost holy, script, and thus a return to it is enticing for many Indonesians. During the 2014 presidential elections, Prabowo Subianto brought forward this idea and essentially called for a system with a very strong president (Aspinall, 2015; Mietzner, 2015a).

2. Pancasila (five pillars) is the so-called state philosophy.

3. The MPR, which is the second chamber, consists of the DPR members and an additional 132 parliamentarians who form the Regional Chamber (DPD, Dewan Perwakilan Daerah). The DPD has only consultative powers. Its members are elected through plurality votes in multi-member constituencies at the provincial level and cannot belong to a political party.

4. Independent candidates may also run, but the nomination requirements are still onerous.

5. The vote by the Akbar Tanjung faction against President Habibie (Golkar) and his accountability speech (given before the MPR in October 1999) does not fit Samuels and Shugart’s model because the president was not directly elected back in May 1998. As then vice president, Habibie automatically assumed office following Suharto’s resignation. Habibie inherited some of the presidential powers of Suharto but was eventually subject to the MPR. During his tenure, one might say that a transition from New Order presidentialism to a hybrid form of presidentialism/parliamentarism took place.

6. Both these practices are called blusukan.

7. Mujani and Liddle (2007, p. 850) wrote that Indonesia was likely to be a ‘genuine instance of the presidentialization of voting behaviour in a new democracy’.

8. Although political parties were strongly personalized, the campaign for the parliamentary election in June 1999 was not particularly influenced by strategic planning with respect to the indirect presidential election scheduled for October 1999.

9. In the 2014 presidential elections, only parties or coalitions that received at least 25% of the vote or 20% of the mandates in the preceding parliamentary elections were allowed to nominate candidate pairs. Jokowi was nominated by a small coalition consisting of the PDI-P, the traditionalist Islamic PKB, Partai NasDem, and Hanura. Prabowo Subianto ran for his own party Gerindra, Golkar, and the Islamic parties PAN (which appointed Hatta Rajasa as vice presidential candidate), PKS, and PPP.

10. This was decided upon at the party’s national meeting (Rakernas) in Semarang in September 2014, notably on the suggestion of Jokowi. According to PDI-P deputy secretary general, Ahmad Basarah, the decision ‘represents the process of consensus democracy and guided democracy’ (Jakarta Post, ‘PDI-P congress’, 2015).

11. There is a growing literature on the success of multiparty presidentialism (Pereira & Melo, 2012). The ‘Coalitional Presidentialism Project’ at the University of Oxford (Chaisty, Cheeseman, & Power, 2015) looks at the surprising sustainability of multiparty presidentialism in Africa, Latin America, and postcommunist Europe. Presidents may use specific tools to secure support: legislative powers (through the initiation, deliberation, modification and enactment of laws), partisan powers (over their own party or allied parties within the coalition), cabinet management or cabinet allocation (via patronage distribution), budgetary powers (in the form of public spending in order to obtain targeted political support) and the exchange of favours between the president and legislators (Chaisty, Cheeseman & Power, 2015, p. 6ff).

12. This has already been dealt with by Kawamura (2013a).

13. Buying out whole factions is, in contrast to Thailand, unknown in Indonesia.

14. This pertains to Prabowo’s company Kiani Kertas and a governmental compensation fund for the victims of the Sidoarjo mudflow disaster, for which the company Lapindo, owned by Aburizal Bakrie, is responsible.